#LuxuryCar

While the rumormill is rife with talk of Infiniti/Mercedes alliances for small, front-drive cars, one of the products to come out of the tie-up might be a luxury car for Renault.

At $66,900 the 2012 Hyundai Equus is the most expensive Korean car I’ve ever driven.

Just like the Lacrosse, the Buick Regal will no longer be available with a base 2.4L 4-cylinder engine. Instead, the same 2.4L with Buick’s eAssist mild hybrid will become the standard powerplant.

Panther fans, grab your heart medication. Cadillac and Lincoln will be unveiling their entrants into the livery car market next week at the International LCT show in Las Vegas, based on the front-drive Cadillac XTS sedan and Lincoln MKT crossover.

BMW is said to be planning a new minivan-esque competitor to the Toyota Prius V, dubbed the i5. We like the name given to it in the original Autobild story; Neuer Elektro-Van.

Today, TTAC was treated to what might be the first look at Acura’s newest flagship. While we saw renderings of the new car, we weren’t allowed to take photographs – but none of the information released was embargoed.

Lincoln’s free-falling sales will apparently be remedied by allowing customers to watch their cars get serviced via smart phone, if you can stomach the party line coming from Ford marketing boss Jim Farley. Also outlined were Lincoln’s idea of “luxury” and powertrain details for the upcoming MKZ

“You know,” Mark Templin of Lexus told the press, “the first time I saw this car, I was speechless.” I know I have that quote correct, because it was in the copy of the speech handed out after the press event.

Speeches about speechlessness aside, however, this is the new styling direction of Lexus. That much is obvious from the pinched grille. What else can we learn about it?

The new 3! All new! And it looks like it finally has some decent brakes. About three and a half inches longer, it’s also now finally available in Audi “Atmospheres” the Sportline / Luxuryline / Modernline trim levels that BMW has used, in one fashion or another, in Europe for Averylongtime.

Note: Photos courtesy of Cars In Depth. Click here for a complete gallery of photos from the Cadillac ATS reveal.

At an invitation only event held at Detroit’s College For Creative Studies, last night Cadillac revealed its new BMW 3 fighter, the ATS. The location was appropriate since CCS is located in a former General Motors’ building, actually the first location of Harley Earl’s “Art & Colour” department, the progenitor of what is now called GM Design. In fact there’s a lounge where Earl’s corner office used to be right around the bend from the hall where the reveal was, and the hall itself was formerly used by GM styling for in-house displays. Twenty of the 170 CCS graduates at GM Design worked on the ATS project and Cadillac is a major benefactor of the school. The choice of the location was anything but a coincidence. Cadillac is undoubtedly using styling to set the ATS apart from its luxury C segment competitors.

When friends and colleagues ask our counsel on whether or not to buy an older V12 BMW (it happened more than once) the standard answer is always an emphatic “no”. Most people cannot handle the idea of two ECUs (for twice the complexity and repair bills), and for the average Joe looking for a prestigious ride on the cheap (an oxymoron if there ever was one), a V12 BMW is bankruptcy on four wheels.

But when an ad for a car proudly touts the ability to withstand “ .357 MAG., 9MM AND .44 MAGNUM AND EQUIVALENT HANDGUN AND LIGHT SUBMACHINE GUN BALLISTICS“, suddenly it becomes very hard to ignore.